


Forbidden Bee Colors

by TeamMightyPen



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Late night talks, No beta we die like Sunset Curve, Snuggling, Soulmate AU, canon adjacent, not by my standards it doesn't, platonic soulmates and romantic soulmates, there's a bit of sad in there but idk if it qualifies as angst, yeeeee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 15:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30107826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamMightyPen/pseuds/TeamMightyPen
Summary: Julie looked at her soulmates, and she saw color. They weren’t black and white, like the rest of the world and the people in it. And when she touched her soulmates, the color that filled every fiber of them entered her own eyes and she could see the world around her in color, too. But it never stayed once the contact was over. Such was the nature of forged soulmates. They weren’t fated soulmates.--a Jukebox soulmate au for the six month JATP gift exchange
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 19
Kudos: 108





	Forbidden Bee Colors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noxfelicis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxfelicis/gifts).



> I hope you like this, Else!
> 
> I may have gone a little bit overboard with the length of this one, but I'm taking it as an opportunity to practice more things I haven't quite gotten under my belt, yet. You asked for "fun, cute, makes me a little bit emotional" and I may have gone a lil bit overboard with that, too, at one point. I have a feeling you might be a bit more than a little bit emotional oops. But there's so much fluff I promise, don't you worry

Julie plugged her ears and winced while the yelling grew louder. And then suddenly, there were three boys in a heap on the rug of the studio.

Julie gawked while they picked themselves up, but what had her attention was the one in the middle -- _he wasn’t black and white._ Her eyes locked on the spot on the ground where his hand left a mark on the rug. Where it had previously been grey, like most of the furniture in the room, now a dull blue peeked through. It was nothing compared to the blue of his jacket or the yellow print on his shirt or the coloration of his face and hands and hair, but it was also _definitely new and had not been there before_.

Julie screamed.

* * *

Julie had been able to see color for as long as she could remember. It wasn’t uncommon for children to forge soulmate bonds with their parents or siblings, and Julie had been soulmates with her parents since before she’d been old enough to know what soulmates were. And then Carlos had come along, and little five-year-old Julie had almost immediately bonded to him as well.

They were all forged soulmates.

Just like Flynn and Carrie at school, they were all soulmates whom Julie had found and through time spent together their lives and souls became intertwined in an eternally inseparable way.

Julie looked at her soulmates, and she saw color. They weren’t black and white, like the rest of the world and the people in it. Maybe once upon a time they had been, but by the time Julie reached high school she couldn’t remember a time before her closest loved ones were in color.

And when she touched her soulmates, the color that filled every fiber of them entered her own eyes and she could see the world around her in color, too. When she held hands with Flynn or hugged Carrie or locked pinkies with Dad or ruffled Carlos’ hair. And Mom was the most vibrant of all of Julie’s soulmates, the strongest bond she had.

Mom’s hugs made the world explode into all the colors she used to fill the house, like the yellow walls and the orange sofa and the green loveseat. Every time she would linger a touch across Julie’s back as she walked past and Julie was hunched over homework, Julie’s sparkly pens glowed for a moment before fading once again. But Julie’s favorite way to see colors through Mom was when they played music together. It lit up the soulmate bond in a way that nothing else could compare to, filling Julie up with music from the inside and spilling out in vibrant hues until the whole room was full of it. It would happen when they played together side by side at the piano, or when Mom played for Julie and Carlos, or when Julie played a song Mom wrote, or even when Julie listened to one of Mom’s old Petal Pushers songs on a CD.

It was magical.

But it never stayed once the contact was over. Such was the nature of forged soulmates. They weren’t fated soulmates.

That didn’t mean that forged soulmate bonds were any weaker than fated bonds, not by a long shot. Your fated soulmate was supposed to be the one person with whom the soulmate bond would be instant and undeniable, so the universe just connected you two before you even met. All your soulmates were your other halves, but your fated soulmate was the one that fit better than anyone else.

Julie didn’t like thinking of soulmates as “other halves” because it made it seem like you were incomplete without one. Still, she couldn’t deny that when she was with one of her forged soulmates she felt like they were two halves of the same mind. She wondered what it would be like when she found her fated soulmate.

Everyone was guaranteed to find their fated soulmate at some point in their life. And to help you find them, the universe left you clues in the form of their handprints. Wherever their hands had touched, color was left in their place. Julie had heard countless stories and seen romcoms about two soulmates orbiting each other, chasing after handprints left on doorknobs or countertops or even other people until they found each other, the two people the only marks of color in the crowd other than each other’s handprints left on things in their surroundings. And they would race across the street to meet each other in the middle with a kiss and the movie would turn from the artificial black and white filter they used for effect to a colored movie, like the way it did in The Wizard of Oz, and they would get married and live happily ever after.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t always like that in real life.

Rose and Ray were fated soulmates, Julie knew. They could see each other’s handprints on everything in the house, even when they weren’t touching. Fated soulmates’ handprints were the only way you could see color without touching or connecting with one of your forged soulmates.

Or at least, they were supposed to be.

Which was why Julie didn’t understand how she was able to see handprints in the garage. They colored the handles of the large barn doors. They danced across the grey walls and their peeling paint, in a way that Julie couldn’t explain how she saw them against the grey but she did. It reminded her of something she’d read once about how bees could see a range of colors beyond the spectrum of visible light, ultraviolet or infrared colors or something. That was the only way Julie could think to describe how she was able to sense something she couldn’t see with her eyes. The forbidden bee colors. She could see them dancing across the studio.

The colors were all over the stuff up in the loft, but Julie didn’t go up there often. It was just old junk that they hadn’t sold, instruments that belonged to the previous homeowner or something like that. It was easy for Julie to forget that there were colors in the garage when she was in there with Mom, because the music filled up her senses and made the whole world technicolor in front of her eyes, covering up the visible handprints that were there (but she could still see them).

So maybe Julie saw colors in places that she wasn’t supposed to. It probably should’ve bothered her, but she didn’t tell anyone about it.

She didn’t tell anyone about the handprints in the garage. She played the piano with Mom and drowned it out.

She didn’t tell anyone about the blue guitar on the wall at Uncle Trevor’s house. She walked past it to Carrie’s room and they spent their time hanging out in there.

Julie didn’t tell anyone that she could see colors when she listened to Trevor’s old music from his first album or when she sang the lyrics back to herself. She closed her eyes and let the words wash over her.

She didn’t tell anyone when her middle school class went on a field trip to Hollywood and she saw handprints on corners of buildings like someone used the wall as leverage to pull themself around a corner. She grabbed Carrie and Flynn’s hands and they talked about the tourist sights they had just seen.

Handprints didn’t go away after people died, Julie learned, when her mom was gone.

It was like her entire world collapsed in on itself when she was told that it had finally happened. The house was silent and grey. Julie was in the living room. She was alone. Tia was preparing lunch for the family in the kitchen. Carlos was upstairs somewhere, probably in his own room distracting himself.

Julie was alone. She sat on one end of the lonely, empty couch with her knees folded up to her chest. And then Dad came downstairs from his and Mom’s room with the news that it had happened. Julie hadn’t wanted to be there when it did, and that just made her feel worse that she wasn’t there in the end. She looked up at him through watery eyes and saw the blurry outline of him and his red shirt and knew before he even told her.

After he said the words she knew were coming, Julie screwed her eyes shut tight and curled tighter into herself, wrapping her arms more securely around her legs. 

“Oh, honey,” Dad said and made to place his hand on her shoulder but Julie shook her head sharply. She stood and ran up to her room and closed the door behind her, locking it like she never normally did.

Julie never wanted to see color again.

Not if she could never see Mom again.

For a week, she didn’t leave her room except to use the bathroom. Dad would come to bring her meals and try to talk to her but she made sure that whenever he did she was buried under the duvet so she wouldn’t have to see the pigmentation of his skin or the dye of his clothes. She stayed in her four grey walls with her grey furniture and her grey self and her grey mind and missed her mom.

For a month, she didn’t leave the house. She started leaving her room in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep, so she could stretch her legs and move around. Flynn started dropping off her homework by the door, but she never got far enough inside to see Julie and how much she was hurting. Julie never touched anyone because she didn’t want the world to be color ever again. After a month, the school let Dad know that she had to come back, so she did.

Julie went to school and kept her head down, she didn’t talk, she did her homework, she didn’t touch anyone but especially not Flynn or Carrie. She didn’t play in music class. She didn’t listen to music while at home, she didn’t sing a single note, she didn’t touch a piano.

If she were to play music and not see colors, she thought she might just die right then and there.

They closed up the garage doors. Julie wasn’t there when Dad did it. She didn’t want to acknowledge the handprints or the memories.

After two months of stumbling her way through a grey world, Dad sat her down.

“Look, mija,” he said. They were in the living room. Julie hated the living room now. “I know it’s hard. I know you see her everywhere. I do, too.”

Julie raised her eyes from her feet to Dad’s face, looking at him clearly for the first time since before Mom died.

“I see your mom everywhere. I see her on the couches and the chairs and the dining room table. I look at you and Carlos, and I see her on _you.”_

_Handprints. They didn’t go away after Mom died._ Dad saw Julie and Carlos in color, but he could see Mom’s handprints on them, too. _Forbidden bee colors._

“It’s like she’s right here with us. And I love that, _I do._ I think,” Dad reached forward to lay his hand on Julie’s knee but she flinched away. He retreated. “I think it might help for you to talk to a therapist friend of mine. Her name is Dr. Turner and she’s good at what she does.”

Julie conceded to go see Dr. Turner. Maybe she would help.

Julie still spent most of her time in her bedroom, but she started coming into the common spaces more often. She ate family dinner at the kitchen table instead of carrying her plate up to her room. They kept a fourth plate out at every meal. Julie didn’t join hands with them during the prayer.

She started talking more at school. She still didn’t even think of touching the piano. Mrs. Harrison always gave her a sad smile and a small nod and let her be.

“Julie, it’s not healthy to avoid human contact like this,” Dr. Turner told her one Thursday afternoon four months after... _yeah._ They met biweekly at the therapist’s office. 

Julie sighed. “I know, but...It won’t be the same as it was with her.”

Dr. Turner hummed. “I know your bond with your mother was stronger than that of yours with your dad or Carlos or your friends. That doesn’t mean that those bonds can’t grow stronger. And it also doesn’t mean those bonds aren’t valuable, precious gifts. You have soulmates. You have connections with these people, and they’re going to last forever. Are you really going to forsake that?”

Julie looked Dr. Turner in her grey face. “Okay. I’ll try.”

The following Wednesday, Julie emerged from her bedroom after her homework was done. Carlos was in his room and would go to bed within the hour, probably. She came downstairs where Dad was on the couch watching a Hallmark movie. He paused it when he saw her.

Julie hated the living room. But, she hated a lot of things right now. Maybe she could work on fixing her relationship with the living room to start fixing her relationship with herself. This could be the first step.

Julie sat down on the couch next to Dad. She hadn’t sat on this couch since the day she heard the news.

Dad lifted his arm and gave Julie a questioning look. She nodded imperceptibly, her bottom lip already beginning to wobble. She’d missed this. Too much. Julie shut her eyes tight and snuggled into her papa’s side. He laid his arm across her shoulders and around her frame, securing her into place. If any tears came out they were immediately absorbed into his shirt. This was her first hug in four months.

After a little while where Dad didn’t say anything, he just rubbed his arm up and down her back, she opened her eyes and turned her head so her ear was against chest. Julie saw her home in color for the first time _in four months_ and she cried harder. At first it was just a little bit, her eyes getting hot and her throat getting tight, and big, fat tears sliding down her cheeks. But then it hit her harder and her lips stretched back and her nose started running and she couldn’t stop the sounds that came out of her as she sat wrapped in her papa’s arms like she’d wanted to be the whole time since Mom died.

“Oh, mija, I know.”

Julie buried her face back into his chest and he wrapped his other arm around her. She fell asleep on the couch that night, and woke up the next morning in her bed.

Julie started getting better after that. She would link fingers with Dad and side hug Flynn. After eight months of seeing Dr. Turner, Julie stopped going. She really did feel better. But music was still a no-go.

Music was always the color of Mom, and if it wasn’t going to be that...it wouldn’t be music to Julie.

One year after she’d come back to school, thirteen months after Mom died, Julie couldn’t play the piano for class, even though she’d promised herself that she would do it this time. This was her last chance. And she’d blown it.

That night, she opened the garage doors for the first time since Mom. She put her own hands on the handprints on the door handles and pulled them open. Inside it was just like she remembered it, if not dustier. She looked at the grey throw pillows and the black leather couch painted with forbidden bee soulmate colors that she’d never questioned. The grey piano. The darts on the dartboard gleamed the worn reds and yellows and blues.

Julie sat at the piano. Maybe, if she was in this space, she could play something...here, connected to her mom, she could finally make music again.

No, she couldn’t.

“I’m so sorry, Mom. That I haven’t been in here.” _That I haven’t made music. That I spent so long avoiding Dad and Carlos and Flynn and Carrie. That I haven’t been the same since you…_

The colors in the loft caught her eye. Might as well get this part over with, she had to clean it out anyway.

Julie climbed the grey ladder, placing her hands on the invisible marks left by someone before her. 

The CD stood out to her. _Sunset Curve._ It also had the invisible mark of handprints. 

She placed the CD into the player down on the main level and sat on the couch while it loaded.

From the first riff of the guitar, Julie felt something she hadn’t in ages. Like a watercolor brush on a blank piece of paper, color spread out across her vision, encompassing the studio. It was a sight for sore eyes. She’d missed this, too.

And then there was screaming, and the CD cut off, and the color retreated, and three boys were laying on the ground.

But the one in the middle wasn’t grey.

* * *

The boys of Sunset Curve became friends because of their shared interest in music. It wasn’t until after they’d been friends for a while that they learned that they all shared more than just music and a “band” that sometimes practiced covers in Bobby’s garage.

The four ninth-graders were at a sleepover at Alex’s house, sharing the kind of confessions that only happen at three a.m. during sleepovers.

“I don’t have any soulmates,” Reggie whispered into the dark. He seemed afraid that the other boys would judge him. _No soulmates? No connections with anybody? Not even your parents?_ “I- I’ve never seen colors before.”

Bobby turned over in his sleeping bag. “Shit, me neither, dude.”

“Wait, really?”

Luke sighed. “Yeah. I don’t have any either.”

“I wish I knew what colors looked like,” came Alex’s small voice.

In all their heads sat heavy the same thought. _I’m not alone._

The next morning Luke woke up and saw Alex’s blonde hair and Bobby’s red pajama shirt and Reggie’s green socks. The four of them marvelled and sat on the carpeted floor of Alex’s basement, not even moving from their bedding. Alex cried. Bobby laughed. Reggie sat, shellshocked. And Luke…

Luke just smiled. A small smile, private, just for himself. 

He had a soulmate.

And then, after silence for a long time, they wanted to test what they’d heard for so long to be true, and they all reached out their hands to the middle, and when they touched, the world exploded in a kaleidoscope. 

Was this what they’d been missing this whole time? How had they gone fifteen years without this?

Luke was so overwhelmed that he had to pull away and breathe. Alex cried more.

After that, the boys were inseparable -- almost literally. They were always holding hands or grabbing shoulders or giving each other side hugs. Anything to keep in contact with each other and see the world full of life. When they each had to go home at the end of the day, they’d walk into grey houses with grey parents and nod and smile and go to sleep. Luke’s home was so grey all the time. There was never color, never passion, never music, never soul.

The four boys spent so much time holding or touching each other that seeing in color felt just natural as seeing in greyscale.

None of them ever saw handprints from fated soulmates, but none of them ever felt like they were missing anything anymore. They didn’t feel alone -- they always had each other.

Luke started writing music for Sunset Curve (they’d named the band after climbing a tall hill to watch the sunset one evening and being floored by the oranges and yellows as they curved around the horizon) and sometimes, lines would just _come to him,_ and they were perfect in every way, and as he’d write or think or sing them, he’d see color. That’s what led him to believe that, while the band were his forged soulmates, his fated soulmate was music itself. That was a simple fact to Luke.

The band played music together, the songs that Luke wrote, and he could tell by their gasps that they could see the colors too when they were all playing together. Music connected them, they were touching each other without touching each other, feeling the rhythm and the sound and making music together.

When he wrote, some lyrics lit up more than others, and that’s how he knew which ones to keep and which ones to keep reworking or scrap completely.

Luke wrote all his best songs about his soulmates. They were about music itself, about the band, about brotherhood and stardom and camaraderie and friendship and dreams and life. Sometimes he wrote about his soulmate bond to music, to try and put it into words, the way he felt.

_Hear a noise in my head_

_It’s calling out like a voice I can’t forget_

_I got a spark in me_

_And you’re a part of me_

_Now ‘til eternity_

Who needed handprints when he had his boys and he had music? The world might be grey around them but his life certainly was not.

_When all the days were black and white_

_Those were the best shades of my life_

...So why could Luke see colors in the studio?

Who was this girl, and why wasn’t she grey?

Luke didn’t even realize until the next night that Julie wasn’t grey like the rest of the world. To be fair, though, that’s because the rest of the world wasn’t grey. Smudged streaks of color painted almost everything in the studio, at least a little bit, and it was easy to forget that he wasn’t touching Alex or Reggie when he could see it all.

Luke didn’t try to sleep at all last night while he and the boys explored this new futuristic Hollywood, but tonight he tried. And he found that he couldn’t sleep even though he wanted to. 

Looks like that was another cool new ghost ability, just like the poofing. Luke was less excited about this one.

So that’s when Luke found himself lying on his couch in the studio (Reggie and Alex were up in the loft) and looking at the orange pillow he held to his chest.

Orange.

The pillow was orange.

Reggie and Alex were in the loft.

Luke sat up and looked around the studio, the revelation hitting him that he could see color. He lifted to his feet and spun in a slow circle, taking in the color _everywhere._ Were these handprints? 

He set down the pillow and poofed silently up to the house he’d been in maybe a dozen times before back in ‘95, and once more last night. 

(But before he left, he grabbed Bright from his songbook. Julie needed something to play to get back into her music program, and he knew Bright would be perfect for her.)

This time, though, he was looking, and he saw the handprints all over. They were on the door, the countertops, the colorful furniture. Luke wasn’t alive but he could see Julie’s life in the house around them. He walked around the whole main level of the house slowly, reverently, until the girl herself came walking down the stairs in her yellow sweater and took Luke’s breath away with just how bright and colorful she was when the boys weren’t even here for him to hold on to.

And then she walked through him like Ray walked through Reggie earlier and Luke thought he would feel something if his soulmate was walking _through_ him like that but no, he didn’t feel anything at all. Reggie’s comment that morning must’ve just been Reggie being Reggie because Luke couldn’t feel a thing at all when Julie walked through him. He was air.

But that was pretty cool that she just walked through him, he thought with a big grin. Julie did a double take as if to say _Did I really just do that?_ and Luke only grinned wider.

He showed her the song that he’d seen colors while he’d written, colors from his connection with his soulmate that was music. And they sang it together, and the gaps of grey in the kitchen were filled in for that moment in time. 

* * *

Julie thought if she just ignored Luke’s color and his handprints then it would be fine. For some reason, the universe decided her soulmate was some ghost from the nineties with no sense of personal space, literally or figuratively, but Julie wasn’t going to let that get to her.

As far as she was concerned, she didn’t need any more soulmates than the ones she already had.

Handprints had always been in the garage. What were a few more? Although, she would say, it was distracting to see more than just the floor and walls and couch and a few of the old decorations in colors, bee or visible. Now the piano was brown and the throw pillows were orange and Julie didn’t know what to do with this new information.

Thanks to Luke, the boy in the blue hoodie and yellow Rush shirt, the boy with the brown hair and the green eyes, Julie played her mom’s song the morning after he arrived. From the instant she played the first note, the watercolor paintbrush thing happened again like it hadn’t for over a year. She must’ve forgotten how vibrant it all was, because she was stunned. Somehow Mom always knew the exact right words, because she captured everything Julie was thinking and feeling and managed to reach down and hug Julie through this song.

And then Julie sang with Luke that night and the same watercolor thing happened then, too. And the next day at the pep rally, and that afternoon when they played for Flynn. Before Julie knew it they’d formed a band and she was still ignoring the new handprints that showed up every day. Luke wasn’t acknowledging anything, so why should she?

If the colors in the studio weren’t bad enough, those three annoyances decided that one time that her bedroom was a fun place to hang out, and now she got the reminder whispering _soulmate soulmate soulmate_ there, too.

She was not looking. She did not see it. She was looking away.

Until the Friday three weeks after they’d formed their band, that is. 

Alex and Reggie were becoming slowly more colorful to her as well, which surprised Julie. She’d never forged a soulmate bond with someone this quickly. Flynn and Carrie had both taken much longer than a week or two, but something about her and the boys clicked and they got along so well it was like she’d found a brother and a best friend she’d been missing all her life.

Luke was the brightest of the three of them -- _oh, Bright, she got it now_ \-- but they were all becoming soulmates with Julie. Two forged, one fated.

Julie couldn’t let herself just not acknowledge this anymore. She had to know if Luke could see her handprints too. He’d never mentioned anything, and she had to know. So, that night, while her three bandmates were deciding what adventure they were going to go on that night, she spotted Luke’s songbook on the coffee table.

She’d never touched his songbook before. If he could see handprints, he’d definitely see them there.

So Julie leaned forward and wrote with her finger on the black cover. _Hey :)_

Luke finished up a witty comeback at Alex and turned to see what Julie thought of whatever they’d been talking about, but he paused mid-sentence when his eyes locked on his songbook. Aha! So he _could_ see the forbidden bee colors, too!

“Luke? What’s wrong?”

Luke patted Alex on the chest and breathed a laugh. “Actually, boys, you go on without me. I’m not feeling it tonight. Maybe Julie and I can finish one of those songs we started writing, huh?”

“Alright. Alex, c’mon let’s go! I wanna see if we can find a ferris wheel tonight!”

Alex laughed and then he and Reggie were gone.

Luke turned back around more than a couple silent moments later. He rubbed the back of his neck and laughed awkwardly. Julie watched him expectantly.

Luke sat on the small chair and picked up his songbook. He ran his finger over the cover where Julie had written. Finally, he spoke.

“Hey.” He wore a small smile that matched the one she’d drawn.

Julie couldn’t help but reciprocate his grin. “I knew it.”

A silence elapsed for too long before Luke said something else.

“Sooo…”

He put his hand down on the grey armrest of the chair and Julie’s eyes followed it. When he pulled his hand away to lean forward, her eyes stayed on the brand new handprint. Luke followed her line of sight to the armrest.

“You know,” he said, “seeing color is really exciting when it’s bright and loud and I’m playing music or when I’m with the band, but…” Luke leaned forward conspiratorially and Julie’s eyes were drawn back to his face. “It’s really nice to see it for once when it’s quiet and still and I’m just...on my own. It’s nice out here. All the grey can be calming, but so can the color, I realize now. It’s...peaceful. Majestic, almost. Serene.”

Julie quirked a smile. “Well, aren’t you quite the poet?”

“Lyricist.”

“Same difference.”

“Definitely not.”

Julie laughed, grabbed one of the mostly orange pillows from beside her and lobbed it at his head. “You know, you missed a spot.”

Luke caught it and smirked. “Oh, did I?” He held the pillow with one hand and ran the other one all over the surface of the fabric, making sure he touched the whole thing. Julie watched with fixated eyes.

By the time he was done, the orange pillow was one of the brightest things in the whole mostly-grey room (other than Luke himself, of course). Most of the things Luke had touched in the 90’s that had stayed in the studio until 2020 were already grey or black, like the floors and walls and leather couch, so while Julie had been able to see handprints there, they weren’t vibrant like these ones were.

“For the record,” he said, tossing it back to her once he deemed himself finished, “you did, too.”

Julie looked between him and the pillow, turning it over as if she could try and see which parts she’d never touched before. Luke laughed.

“Come on, it’s getting dark.”

He was right. Dusk was falling and the previously bright studio was falling dimmer with every minute. Luke stood up out of the chair and walked to the light switch by the door, trying to hunt for the plug to the fairy lights that lined the studio. Julie giggled when he got down on his hands and knees and started searching around the floor. She sighed and stood up to come help him.

“Move over, lemme through.”

Luke scooched out of the way immediately and Julie grabbed the plug from behind the corner of the table, plugging it into the wall. The lights came on, twinkling a soft glow into the studio. Julie knew from when Mom had been alive that they cast a warm shine on the room, but all she could see right now was the uncolored light.

Once the lights were on, Julie stayed on the floor, sitting criss-cross. Luke matched her and rested his back against the leather couch. He grabbed another pillow from behind his head and started coloring that one, too. Julie watched his hands work. When he finished with that pillow, he grabbed another.

Into the silence, he said, “You know, I didn’t see color until high school.”

It took a minute for the words to register but when they did Julie’s eyes flickered up to his. “...Wait, really?” He kept his own eyes on his work and kept talking.

“Nah. I never really got close enough with my parents, I guess. No siblings, either. No real close friends until the guys.” He stood up once he finished the last pillow and walked over to the shelf next to where Reggie stood when he played. Luke started picking up the various knick knacks off the shelf and touching them, feeling them, covering them with colors.

“Sometimes I wonder why my parents and I weren’t soulmates. Especially my mom and me. I loved her, a lot, and I know she loved me too, but...we never formed that kind of a connection, I guess. We didn’t really get along about a lot of stuff, even before the band.”

Julie didn’t talk. This seemed to be cathartic for him, to let this off his chest, so she just let him keep going.

“And then suddenly, one day in freshman year, the boys and me...we’d forged something. We could see colors. It was all of their first time, too. I didn’t get what all the excitement was about until it happened.”

He turned to look Julie in the eyes. She stood up and took a few slow steps closer to Luke. 

His voice dropped even softer. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” Julie breathed.

Luke set down the vase he’d been holding. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Did you have other- could you see colors before?”

Julie knew what he was asking, but, like her, he must’ve been too afraid to actually say the word. Saying it meant it was real and they had to acknowledge it. Julie didn’t know what they were doing. They were standing on the edge of a cliff and looking over but not taking the leap. It was thrilling, and scary at the same time. As much as she liked this weird thing they were doing right now, she didn’t want to think about the implications of a fated relationship with Luke. With Alex and Reggie it was different. Reggie was like the big brother she’d never had, and Alex reminded her of Carrie in so many ways it was uncanny. They were strictly platonic soulmates, if not familial. But with Luke, it didn’t feel like it was strictly anything. He was already everything to her, and she didn’t know if that scared or excited her. She settled on both.

_Could you see colors before?_

“Uh, yeah. My parents and brother, and my best friends.”

“Oh, cool.”

“Yeah. Mom practically raised us out here in the studio. My brother and me, I mean. She would play us music and I could see color everywhere.” Julie didn’t mention that she had always been able to see handprints, even when Mom hadn’t been playing.

Luke passed her a scrapbook he had just finished coloring. The title read “2010” in foam letters. Julie raised a questioning look to him and he smirked, gesturing for her to color the front as well. Julie smiled and ran her hand over the cover until Luke seemed satisfied with the state of the cover. She opened it and flipped through a couple of pages, thumbing her way through the year.

Mom always liked to make scrapbooks. She had them from all the way back before she and Dad had gotten married all the way up until the year before she’d gotten sick. Sometimes Dad looked at them, but after Mom died, the books had stayed out here to collect dust.

Julie reached the page with her first day of kindergarten photos and Luke cooed over her shoulder. Julie rolled her eyes and flipped the cover shut, replacing the book back on the shelf.

Before Julie could stop Luke, though, he opened the 2011 scrapbook and started leafing through the pages. He laughed at the goofy pictures of Julie wearing clothes that her parents really should not have let her wear in public. He “awwww”ed at the pictures of baby Carlos’ second birthday.

Luke came to the pages of Julie’s sixth birthday party and looked at the pictures of her princess-themed party with Carrie and Flynn and other friends from kindergarten who had since moved on to other schools or other extracurriculars and drifted away. He ran his fingers over the plastic covering the photos and Julie watched them fill in with the colors she remembered to be there. “Awwww, look at you.”

They’d all gotten dressed up for Julie’s party like it had been Halloween. Mom and Dad were the queen and king, and Julie stood in front of them in her purple princess dress, complete with a pointy hat with a ribbon out the top. She had a magic wand in her hand, too, with a purple handle and yellow star at the end. They’d even dressed up little two-year-old Carlos like a prince. 

Luke flipped to the next page and laughed out loud. “Okay, you gotta tell me the story behind these.”

Julie started laughing too because she knew exactly which pictures he was talking about before she even saw the page.

Julie was sitting at the dining room table with a lit birthday cake in front of her and a big smile on her face for the camera. All the other princesses were sitting around the table, too, and Mom stood behind Julie’s shoulder, having just set the cake down. Carlos was in a high chair on Julie’s other side and he was crying, his face screwed up and red, clearly about to get really loud. The next picture was of Julie blowing out the six candles and Carlos _screaming._ And in the next one, everyone was grimacing and covering their ears, Julie’s magic wand still in her hand because she didn’t let go of that thing all day.

And in the _next_ picture, Carlos had lifted himself as far out of his high chair as he could go to _throw_ himself at the cake. Julie was screaming and leaning away and so were Carrie and Elaine. Flynn was laughing, and Mom’s arms were outstretched to catch Carlos and put him back. You could clearly tell she was shouting _“Oh, no!”_

In the next one you could see one of Dad’s hands in the frame, too, fingers stretched out as if he could reach forward and put Carlos back, but Carlos had already dug his hands into the pink frosting.

The last picture on the page had a smiling Carlos and a pouting Julie. Mom hadn’t washed the frosting off of Carlos’ face yet so his cheeks and hair and nose were covered in pink sticky frosting. Julie’s arms were crossed and her wand stuck out from the crook of her elbow.

“Okay, so my theme was a ‘pretty princess’ birthday party,” Julie got out after she finally stopped laughing. Luke couldn’t stop his own laughter either as Julie regaled the story to him. He set the scrapbook back and picked up more stuff to color while she talked.

They kept moving around the room and touching everything in it. There were a lot of shelves and things on them, and they spent the next long while just talking and coloring the world. Luke slid his hands along the curtains in the windows, instilling fuschia and pink into the flowers printed onto the fabric. He moved on and Julie followed behind him wherever he decided to go next, because he would hand her things once he finished and point out the spots that were grey to him so she could cover them with her own hands. For the tiny spots she’d missed on things she’d mostly covered, he pointed to the exact place where it was grey and she pressed her thumb to the spot.

“That part’s _supposed_ to be grey, you doof.”

“Oh, my bad.”

“Yeah, okay, you already knew that.”

“...Yeah, I did.”

They spent probably a full forty minutes standing in the greenhouse window, just running their hands up and down every big floppy green leaf. Luke told Julie about the time he got his first bike and he couldn’t ride it for the longest time, but after his dad eventually helped him figure it out they hadn’t been able to keep him off of it. When he wasn’t in his room or at school, he was outside riding his bike on adventures through the neighborhood. When he grew bigger they got him a big kid bike that he used to ride to the boys’ houses, and eventually to band practice or to gigs. He told her about how even after he got his license a month after he turned seventeen, he still preferred to bike places whenever possible anyway.

Julie told Luke about her first piano recital in the second grade with her parents and aunt in the front row. He told her about a prank they’d pulled on Alex when they were sixteen but he’d gotten so freaked out that they had to stop and calm him down. She told him about the math test she had coming up on Tuesday and how she was stressed. He told her about where he and the boys had gone the previous Wednesday night while Julie was sleeping. All the while they moved through the studio, slowly filling it with color that stayed.

They both knew what they were doing, but neither of them acknowledged it. If they just stayed here, peeking over the cliffside but never leaning too far, they would stay safe.

Luke leaned over the piano and wax-on-wax-offed the top of it while Julie laughed. They didn’t try to cover that completely. Julie liked the grey staying there, like a piece of Mom still there in the room, a reminder. Something left to still fill with color when she played, even when everything else was covered in handprints.

They sat back down on the couch and chair where they’d started and gathered the throw blankets in their laps, running their hands over the fibers and edges, no longer paying attention to covering the whole surface while they just talked. Julie tugged on the corner of her blanket and told Luke about what had happened after Mom died. He stayed silent the whole time and offered a comforting smile when she finally met his eyes at the end of the story.

Eventually, the only part they’d yet to touch was the loft. Julie climbed up the ladder but Luke just poofed up there. Instead of continuing what they’d been doing all night, Luke perched on the edge of the loft, dangling his feet over the side like Alex liked to do sometimes. He patted the space beside him and Julie sat down. She dangled her legs, too.

They both looked down at the studio space, now alive and bright. It was beautiful. It looked like it did back when Mom and Julie would play together at the piano, but right now it was silent. That made it even better. The room was more vivid than it had been when Julie played Wake Up. Actually...it was just as bright as when Julie would listen to Uncle Trevor’s music, just as bright as the blue guitar at his house. Julie let that thought go when Luke started talking again.

“It takes a bit of the magic away, doesn’t it? Of playing music and seeing all the colors appear?”

Julie chewed her lip. “I think it’s a different kind of magic. The colors are already there and we don’t have to do anything to be able to see them.”

The picture was almost perfect. But in the periphery of her vision Julie could see herself, her grey clothes and hair and skin. She knew Luke could see the same on himself.

They were looking over the side of the cliff. Julie decided to be brave and try something. She would take another small step closer to the edge. Maybe the ground would crumble out from under her and she would fall, but maybe she’d feel the exhilaration even more.

She set her grey hand down on the space between them and watched Luke for his reaction. He finally moved his gaze from the room to her after he’d finished looking at their handiwork. His eyes followed down her arm to where her hand lay. 

Luke finally, tentatively, hovered his hand above hers, about to envelop her smaller fingers with his calloused ones.

He set his hand down over hers and phased right through as if he wasn’t there at all.

Oh.

Right.

He was a ghost. She wasn’t.

Julie tried not to be too disappointed. She should have known better, but she’d forgotten that he wasn’t physically there after they had spent the whole night handing things back and forth and sharing stories. He was so real, she had forgotten for a night that he wasn’t actually.

Julie looked away before Luke could get a good look at her face. She stared down at the blindingly dazzling colors again. She needed to change the subject away from this.

“Oh! I think I have an idea for the bridge for Great!”

“Really? Sweet!”

Luke poofed back down to the floor of the garage. He was probably aware that she was trying to change the subject, but he was being nice enough to not acknowledge it.

Julie climbed hand over hand back down the ladder. The loft could wait to be colored another time. But before she sat down on the couch with Luke, there was one more thing she wanted to do.

Julie knelt down by Luke’s guitar stand, tilting her head with her tongue between her teeth.

“Julie? What are you doing?”

She raised her hand in front of her and laid it on the body of the blue electric guitar. She pressed her palm and fingers hard into the glossed surface before pulling away. She couldn’t see any difference on the instrument, but she knew she’d left her mark. Julie grinned and turned her head over her shoulder to look at Luke’s expression. His jaw was dropped open, eyes fixed on her handprint.

Julie laughed. “Come on, we’ve got work to do. We told the boys we’d finish this song tonight, what will they think if we didn’t work on it at all?”

Julie and Luke passed more jokes back and forth while they worked, but finally they had a completed song in front of them.

And if the new bridge sang _let your colors blind their eyes,_ and if Reggie and Alex gave the two of them a strange look when they heard it for the first time, and if fans or listeners would one day question the meaning behind the lyric, Julie and Luke wouldn’t let on that it meant anything. “It’s a metaphor,” they would say, even though many probably wouldn’t believe it.

After they penned the last word, Julie yawned. She didn’t know how late it was, her phone had been abandoned on the coffee table all night since practice had ended. It felt close to midnight, if not later. Probably closer to one.

Luke’s eyes widened. “Oh, that’s right, you need to sleep.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” she waved him off. “I’m fine, and it’s a Friday anyway.”

“No, seriously, Julie. C’mon, it’s really late and you need to get to bed.”

But Julie didn’t want to go all the way back up to her bedroom. That was so many stairs to go up and it was chilly outside and she was nice and warm and comfy in here.

So instead she made herself comfy on the couch, one of the orange pillows under her head and one of the throw blankets over her body. Luke chuckled at her antics but didn’t push any harder, instead sitting guard, criss cross with his back against the couch, the same way he’d sat back at the beginning of the evening.

“Mmmmm goodnight, Luke,” Julie hummed.

“Goodnight, Julie,” Luke responded.

Luke picked up her phone from the coffee table to check the time, just curious to see how late they’d stayed up. _3:17 A.M._

* * *

Alex and Reggie got back around dawn. They came laughing into the studio but Luke quickly shushed them and pointed to Julie, who hadn’t moved since she fell asleep. She slept on the couch until Ray came out looking for her, which was around 10:00. 

All afternoon they stayed out there, practicing their new song. Julie went inside for meals, but she always returned as soon as she’d washed her dishes. Luke played on his guitar with the new single blue handprint while they rehearsed, and as soon as the band started playing or singing together, all the marks he and Julie had made last night melted into the total color across their vision. Luke couldn’t explain it, though, he could still see exactly where Julie had touched, even when there wasn’t color against grey to give the spots away.

Every time they played Great and Bright and Finally Free, the colors came. Luke didn’t think he would ever get tired of the way it felt to play with Julie and the boys. It felt like the connection he had had with Sunset Curve back in the nineties, but stronger -- more vivid than he’d ever seen when performing with them. It was vibrant like the connection he felt with music itself, but more substantial, as if he could hold the bond in his hands if he tried. That was ludicrous, though, there was no way to hold music in his hands. He did the next best thing though, he played and played and played.

Luke and Alex and Reggie and Willie went to the Hollywood Ghost Club Monday night and were dazzled by all the performers in their brightly colored costumes, and by the music and the dancing and the showmanship of it all. It looked amazing, and that Caleb guy offered nothing but fun and music and performing and color for eternity. Luke thought back to the three weeks they and Julie had spent becoming friends, he thought about the band they’d made, and he turned Caleb down. He didn’t close that door, though, in case he wanted to pursue that avenue in the future.

After the jolts started happening to them, it took a while for Luke to realize, but every time he was hit by a jolt his vision would go grey until it was over. Everything turned grey, including Alex and Reggie and all the handprints Julie had made. That worried him. He didn’t know what it meant, but it looked really bad.

Luke noticed a pattern after they finished playing Finally Free at the coffeehouse on Tuesday night. When the band took their bows, right as his vision reduced to grey again and the color faded out, the audience gasped. They must disappear at the same time as the bond quieted down. The magic of the performance went away at the same time for everyone involved, whether they were in the band or in the audience, but the glimmer and adrenaline lingered long after in everyone, too.

On Friday, Luke came to visit Julie at her school. He had no problem locating which locker was hers; it was the one that was blue (and the “J” helped, too). That night, they performed Edge of Great. Luke couldn’t help but notice that she was wearing a completely black and white outfit except for the butterfly accessories. It looked nice.

On Saturday, Luke visited his parents again, except this time Julie was there, too. Julie’s head swiveled all around once she walked inside, and Luke knew she was looking at his handprints across the whole house. He’d grown up here, just like Julie had in her house, and he knew that the invisible evidence of that covered nearly everything. 

To him, though, it was all still grey. Everything was a stark reminder of the arguments, the cold silences, the clinking of silverware at dinner, the slammed doors. Except now, there were two handprints: one on the handle of the front door, and one on the baby picture of Luke when he was two. Luke was already overwhelmed with being back here, just like every time he came, but seeing Julie’s handprints and seeing his parents read his song sent him over the edge. He couldn’t stay.

After everything at his parents’ house, Luke forgot for a moment that he couldn’t feel Julie and he tried to hold her hand. Julie was so colorful and _alive_ and she made him feel alive, too. So he tried to grab her hand and she must’ve forgotten, too, because she also reached for his.

The jolt came and he flickered and Julie’s color flickered, too. She went inside and he couldn’t stop her and he poofed back to the garage. It was hopeless, wasn’t it.

No, it wasn’t.

Luke let himself have one last look around the studio. “We’re not coming back here, anyways.” He looked at the evidence of everything Julie had done in here, and let himself feel sad for just this moment because he was about to go fulfill his life’s and afterlife’s dream and cross over, and he wasn’t going to let himself be sad while he did it.

“And where is it that you think you’re going?”

They couldn’t get away, they were stuck in the club, somehow Caleb was _making them play for him,_ and Luke didn’t even get his handprint guitar, he had his white one instead. As the song went on, Luke’s black and white vision started flickering into color, and Luke’s heart dropped to his stomach. Willie had told them that all the lifers and ghosts in the club could see everything in the club in color, but that was because Caleb owned all of their souls. How did Caleb own Luke’s soul yet? This was the magician’s last ditch effort to convince Luke to agree, but Luke hadn’t “signed on” with the HGC yet. Was Caleb able to do that without Luke’s permission?

No, this wasn’t Caleb doing this. Alex got out first, in the middle of their third song. In Caleb’s surprise, Reggie took the opportunity to escape, too. Caleb focused all of his power and influence on Luke to keep him trapped -- if he couldn’t have all three he would at least keep one -- but finally, Luke wrenched himself away, too.

They played and filled the world with color together one last time.

At the end, Luke was ready to let go and totally prepared to cross over, but he couldn’t feel anything happening. Instead, he and the boys poofed back to the garage as the color from their performance dimmed.

They laid on the floor of the garage for an eternity. Logically, Luke knew that it wasn’t that long, but he couldn’t tell if it was a half an hour or four and a half hours. Their bodies kept convulsing with the jolts, feeling just like it had when they’d died the first time. There was nothing but pain, and in between the pain, exhaustion. Every moment was an instant and an eternity, and it didn’t stop. They laid in a heap, waiting for it to end.

At least they were touching each other. At least they were together for this.

The jolts kept coming, closer and closer together. With every jolt, the world flickered grey.

They were crying.

They’d given up.

Just let them go, Luke pleaded to whoever was in charge.

Let them go, but not back to the club. Never back there, ever again.

When Julie came in, they all tried to sit up for her, they used the last of their strengths to make it look better than it was, to ease her mind.

Another jolt hit. Luke wondered if he turned grey during the jolts, too. He wondered if Julie could see that.

Since as long as Luke had been playing music, he’d always been able to see color while he played. But tonight, in the Hollywood Ghost Club, for the first time in his life he hadn’t seen color while he played music. It hollowed him. No music was worth making if it was going to feel like that. Julie was color. Julie was life. Julie was music.

“No music is worth making, Julie, if we’re not making it with you.”

Julie sprung at Luke and wrapped her arms tight around his shoulders. His arms enveloped her like it was second nature and he’d done it a million times. Luke buried his face in her hair and pressed his nose into the crook of her neck. If this was his last moment, it was a good last moment to have.

Julie pulled away too soon, far sooner than Luke would have liked, and it dawned on both of them at the same time what they were doing.

Julie brought her hands down his arms. “How can I feel you?”

“I don’t know.”

But it was so much more than that.

Luke cradled Julie’s face in his hands the way he had wanted to for weeks too long. He slid his thumbs under her eyes, and her eyes were still wet but she was smiling now, too. So was Luke, so was Luke, his nose was still stuffy and his throat was still warm but everything was okay because he wasn’t flickering anymore and he felt stronger and they were in each other’s arms where they belonged.

Everything around them was a kaleidoscope of color but Luke could only focus on Julie’s face and his hands that held her there. The picture they’d tried painting before was finally complete now. Holding Julie in his hands like this meant that every square inch of the garage was covered in Julie’s soul. The color from touching her covered her handprints in a way that touching Alex or Reggie never quite could. And Luke could see his own hands where they framed Julie’s face, and they weren’t grey anymore.

It felt like Luke had been watching the world through a tv screen, but once he and Julie were touching, it wasn’t a tv screen from the 90’s anymore, it was the flatscreen smart tv in Julie’s living room. It felt like the aspect ratio of his vision had expanded from 4:3 to 16:9 and there wasn’t any dark space on the edge anymore. Like all of his senses were heightened. He could feel and see and hear _everything._ Because everything was Julie. And Julie was everything.

The rest of the evening was a blur. The four of them hugged, the stamps disappeared, there was a lot of happy crying. Eventually they had to let go of each other because Julie had to go back to the house. Carlos was waiting for her, she told them. They tried to convince her to stay, but she promised they could hang out tomorrow.

Luke couldn’t wait that long. 

He poofed to right outside her bedroom door later that night and walked through the wood with a hand covering his eyes. “You decent?” he asked. He didn’t want to wait long enough to even knock, but he was still trying to be “classy” for Julie’s sake. And also her modesty, just in case.

Julie laughed. “Yes, Luke.” He could hear her rolling her eyes even though he couldn’t see her.

Luke dropped his hand to his side. Julie was sitting on her bed in her pajamas, some loose yellow flowery pants and an adorable grey t-shirt with green dinosaurs, and her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail. Luke himself had changed out of his suit into some softer clothes, too. He was in his usual jeans with a t-shirt and his oversized orange and green flannel. Luke shuffled his shoes off of his feet and left them by the door.

Julie looked adorable. And also very awake, despite the busy day and late hour. Luke wasn’t tired either, but in the six weeks he’d been a ghost he’d gotten used to not sleeping anymore. The two of them had come a long way from singing together for the first time in Julie’s kitchen.

Julie sat with a single knee hugged to her chest, her phone set down beside her with the screen still on. She smiled softly at him, and he smiled back. They stayed like that for a while, Luke didn’t know how long, just looking at each other. It wasn’t awkward...it felt like home. Luke’s chest felt warm at the sight of her.

It seemed that neither of them wanted to break the moment.

Eventually Luke’s eyes wandered from Julie to the rest of her room. It was lit up by a couple of table lamps casting a gentle glow across the space. His eyes followed the arch of the ceiling, drifting over Julie’s various wall decorations. He started wandering around her room, just looking at her things (but not touching. Boundaries). His feet drew him to a painting on the wall that looked like Julie had made it.

Luke heard the springs in the bed shift and then Julie’s voice came from over his shoulder.

“Can you...can you touch this for me?” Her voice was a little thick; she was clearly still emotional about a lot of things. He couldn’t blame her -- he was, too.

Luke turned around. Julie was holding out the picture of her and her mom in the meadow of dahlias, the same picture that Alex had tried to pick up and dropped onto Julie’s bed that one day. _Is that your mom? Yes, and it’s my favorite picture of us, so if you break it, I’ll break you._

Luke gently grabbed the frame out of Julie’s hand, careful not to overlap their fingers in the hand-off. Luke was terrified that they wouldn’t be able to touch again, and he didn’t want to try only for them to go through each other again like they had before.

Luke ran his fingers over the wooden picture frame, slid his index finger around the perimeter of the slightly dusty glass, and then rubbed his thumbs across the main part of the picture. His mouth twitched up looking at little Julie in the field of fuschia flowers with her mom. She looked to be about the same age as he had been in the “pretty princess” birthday pictures.

When he was done with the picture frame, Luke looked back up at Julie. But she wasn’t looking at him. Her eyebrows drew together in the middle and she was biting her lip, looking down at her hands. Luke knew that she was looking at his handprints on her skin, at how now parts of her hands and wrists and arms were brown and some parts were still grey. Luke himself couldn’t see any difference from how she always appeared, but he knew that she could. He knew because his hands looked different, too. 

For the first time in his life, he could see color on himself without touching one of his soulmates.

The marks of where they’d held each other.

Without taking his eyes off Julie, Luke set the picture frame down on the bookshelf behind him. He reached back around and stopped Julie’s fidgeting by enveloping her hands in his, and she froze, because they actually made contact again.

She lifted her eyes to his, and he stared intently into hers. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here.”

Julie’s lip quivered and she nodded, before throwing herself forward again, her arms around the middle of his back. Luke wrapped his over her shoulders and hugged Julie. While she clutched to him, he rubbed her back, slowly, up and down, up and down.

Finally Julie pulled away again, and just like earlier that night, it felt far too soon. But Luke loosened his arms in tandem with Julie. They leaned back just far enough to look each other in the face again. Julie’s eyes were red.

“Come on, Jules. It’s late, you should get to sleep.”

Julie bit her lip again. She laid her hand on Luke’s forearm where it rested on her shoulder. “Lay with me?”

And how could he deny her anything?

“Of course.”

Julie didn’t turn off the lamps while she crawled onto her bed. She didn’t climb under the duvet, instead opting to lay on top of the bedding. She patted the space next to her and Luke followed, reclining against the headboard.

Julie lay her head on his chest. Luke rested one hand on her curls and the other on his abdomen. They breathed in sync, a soothing lull that would’ve brought Luke to sleep if he still could’ve.

“You know, I had a dream about you,” Julie said after Luke thought she had already been asleep for a while. Her voice was faint.

“Oh?”

“Mhmm. It was black and white, but you weren’t. You never are. And we were wearing black and white clothes, too. And we danced together.” If it wasn’t already nonbeating, Luke would’ve felt his heart still. Julie started playing with his hand. She intertwined her hand with his, ran her fingers up and down his palm, spun his rings around his fingers. “At first we couldn’t touch each other, like that night in the studio, or last Saturday in front of my house. But then we could, and we danced. Everything around us was still black and white, but you weren’t, and neither was I anymore. But then I...I woke up, and it was all grey again.”

“Oh.”

“Mhmm.” Julie slid the pad of her thumb across the callouses on Luke’s hand. “This is better.”

“Yeah.”

Silence settled again. Luke started slowly running his fingers through Julie’s curls while she kept playing with his other hand.

“Something else, too,” Julie murmured.

“What is it?”

“You asked if I was able to see colors before. I told you I was soulmates with my family and friends, but I didn’t tell you something else.”

Luke hummed. He could feel his own voice rumbling through his chest, deeper than normal in his near-sleepy state. He knew that Julie could feel the vibrations of his voice, because her ear was right up against his chest. He liked having her there.

“I was always able to see your handprints in the studio. Since forever. And I realized something, after we learned that Uncle Trevor’s old music was actually yours...I was always able to see colors when I listened to those songs. Long Weekend, Get Lost, Crooked Teeth,” Julie chuckled, “My Name is Luke. I really should’ve figured that one out, huh? I could see color when I listened to them. And it’s because of you. It was always you. I was listening to you. Your music, your words, your soul.

“Alex said that you introduced me to rock. I think maybe you were introducing me to yourself.”

Luke was breathless. “I...I think I had something similar.”

“You did?”

“When I was writing those songs, all of my songs, I could see color, too. When I wrote words or played them or even just thought them in my head. I thought for forever that my fated soulmate was music. Now I know it’s you. It must’ve been you back then, too. We were introducing ourselves to each other.

“When Caleb had us at his club, we were playing music together, the boys and me, but for the first time ever while I was playing music with them, I couldn’t see anything but grey. I realized that you were the reason I could always see color when I played music, and I realized, what’s the point of music if you’re not with me? Because you _are_ music, Julie. You’ve always been by my side through everything, and I couldn’t imagine a life -- or, an _afterlife_ without you in it, too.”

Julie sighed and turned further onto her side so she could wrap her arm around Luke’s torso.

“There’s nowhere else I’d want to be, Luke.”

“Me, neither. Goodnight, Julie.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> If you read this and liked it, I'd love to hear your thoughts! :)
> 
> (find me on tumblr @tmp-jatp)


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